Friday, December 18, 2009

Pediatrician and Immunologist, Dr. PAUL OFFIT

Back during the time when he was a young medical student Paul Offit felt a personal need to challenge the danger of infectious diseases. He studied the great epidemics of history and was awestruck by their killing power. Determined to make a difference, Dr. Paul Offit followed his interest in infectious diseases and vaccines into a 30-year career of achievement.

Now, a renowned Immunologist that entered the field almost 30 years ago Dr. Paul Offit, is Chief of infectious diseases and the Director of the Vaccine Education Center at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the nation's most outspoken advocate for childhood immunizations. In addition to his duties at Children’s Hospital, Paul who believes passionately about the safety of vaccines, works with the pharmaceutical industry to develop new vaccines. He is a recipient of many awards including the J. Edmund Bradley Prize for Excellence in Pediatrics bestowed by the University of Maryland Medical School, the Young Investigator Award in Vaccine Development from the Infectious Disease Society of America, and a Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Paul Offit is one of the co-inventors of the rotavirus vaccine, RotaTeq recommended for universal use in infants by the CDC; for this achievement he received the Gold Medal from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the Jonas Salk Medal from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. He has also published more than 130 papers in medical and scientific journals in the areas of rotavirus-specific immune responses and vaccine safety. Dr Paul Offit once a member of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the author of several books titled Vaccines: What You Should Know (Wiley, 2003, 3rd Edition), Breaking the Antibiotic Habit (Wiley, 1999), The Cutter Incident: How America’s First Polio Vaccine Led to Today’s Growing Vaccine Crisis (Yale University Press, 2005), Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases (HarperCollins, 2007), and the fifth book titled Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure was published by Columbia University Press in the fall of 2008. His most recent book, "Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure," is a critical assessment of the theories that have swirled around autism, the therapies marketed to fix it, and the people—the "false prophets"—who he says have taken emotional and financial advantage of parents seeking a cure.